What is Tome?Tome is a new RP support addon which allows players to add and display additional information about their characters, such as names, titles, appearance and other fields. Tome is heavily centred around optimisation and accessibility, from visually in the interface, right through to the code.

Features
As of right now, Tome is able to do all of the following:

Display a prefix, name override, and suffix for your character.

Display a title for your character.

Display age, height and weight separately, no more need to create a factfile in your appearance fields.

Display a Currently Field, infomation about your character which is immediately noticeable.

Toggle an IC/OOC status flag at the click of a button.

Display a player's level of experience and familiarity with RP between four different flags.

Tutor Mode - a quick and easy way of showing you're there to help.

Provide an unlimited* text field for appearance.

Provide an unlimited* text field for history.

Provide full compatibility with Merisioux where possible.

Display a non-intrusive interface

Have a marginal resource usage

Provide version checking to keep you up-to-date

Character blacklisting to hide tooltips you don't want to see.

Local notes to make sure you never forget anything you shouldn't do about somebody's character.

* Unlimited in this case meaning no character limit. Tome is still limited by Trion's provided addon storage. Cell companies do it. So can we.

Planned Features
Tome is still in the early stages of beta in terms of what we want to push it to, however, the basic functionality is already working, so I decided that we might as well release it to the people who know what they want to see later; you guys, the RPers we built Tome for.

Features that we already have planned to come include:

Guild support - allowing Guild leaders to display information about their guild through guild member's Tome clients, visible to all.

Multiple profile support - Want to have a separate description for each of your character's wardrobe slots? Here you go.

That's all we have planned for now, but we're always open to suggestions from our users. Like I said, you guys know what you want to see, and we're more than happy to add it if we can.

FAQ
A more detailed FAQ is available here. It covers in-depth some of the features of Tome, as well as some common issues that are known to pop up occasionally.

Download Infomation
If you do decide to download Tome, firstly, thank you. Secondly, be aware that Tome is currently in beta. To the best of our knowledge and through the extent of our testing, all the features work.

Contact Us
If you wish to contact the authors of Tome, you can contact Maiiel here or Lyrai here. Alternatively, you can send either of us a mail in game to those names.

Tome 0.3-beta

Features

BlacklistingTome can now hide any tooltips that you don't want to see. Blacklisting commands are available under "/tome help".

Local NotesYou can now save notes for individual characters for later reference. This feature is accessed through the View Pane or is available via command line as listed under "/tome help".

Currently Field A new field intended for displaying information on something about your character to be immediately noticed.

Coloured NamesCertain individuals will now appear with coloured names. These colours represent those that have contributed to Tome in a significant way.

Updated CompatibilityTome now receives the new fields from Merisioux.

Bug Fixes

Broadcast UpdatesTome now correctly broadcasts saved changes and will display these changes correctly. No need to clear to cache to see them.This does not apply to data received from Merisioux. The cache must still expire before new data is fetched.

Version Checking FixThe Tome Tooltip now displays the correct beta number, instead of one ahead.

Textfield FixThe textfield is now no longer picky about where you click it when it is empty and will be selected as the correct focus.

Scrollbar FixThe scrollbar has run some laps and now correctly keeps up to the amount of text within editable fields.

Tooltip FixThe Tome tooltip has been updated with a new courage algorithm. It now no longer runs offscreen when confronted by PvP flagged Merisioux users of the opposing faction. We agree, they're terrifying.

Dropdown FixThe dropdown has recently overcome its overpowering shyness and is no longer hiding (badly) behind the Appearance Field.

Hotfix 0.2.1-beta

Text Field FixTabbed indents now work as they should and don't throw up an error.

Text Field FixNew lines have stopped being suicidal and/or traitorous and will no longer delete themselves or each other.

Tome 0.2-beta

Features

Version CheckingTome will now alert users if it detects a new version of Tome available for download.

Query ThrottlingIn order to reduce bandwidth usage, Tome now throttles queries to one per minute per character.

Load MessageTome now displays a load message when the addon has booted correctly which tells the players the menu commands.

Removal of most third party dependenciesTome now no longer relies on any third party libraries other than ones supplied by Trion. This means that Tome is no longer in danger of being limited by un-updated third party libraries.

New Widget: Non-editable View PaneThe text fields shown while viewing other character's data can no longer be edited.

New Widget: Text WrappingText on the Appearance and History fields in the Preview View now wrap correctly.

New Widget: Draggable WindowThe Tome UI window is now draggable.

New Widget: Dropdown MenuThe Experience Flag has a new dropdown menu with a glowing arrow.
(Zhevron is very proud of this, give him credit, people).

New Widget: ScrollbarsAll text fields now have working scrollbars.

Tome 0.1-beta

Features

Tome UIPlayers can bring up the Tome UI by typing /tome into the chatbox in game.

Prefix / Name / Suffix fieldsPlayers can enter a prefix, a name override, and a suffix for their characters.

Title FieldPlayers can set a title to appear for their character seperate of the titles earned in game.

Age / Height / Weight fieldsPlayers can set the age, height, and weight of their characters using whatever terms they want. (IE: not just limited to numbers)

Toggle-able IC/OOC ModesPlayers can toggle between IC and OOC modes at the click of a button.

Toggle-able Tutor ModeSimilar to the above, players can toggle between being flagged as a tutor with a button press.

4-Level Experience FlagPlayers can set their level of RP experience and familiarity between four different options.

Appearance FieldPlayers can write a description for their characters. No text limit.

History FieldPlayers can write a history for their characters. No text limit.

Preview ViewPlayers can preview their data as it appears to other Tome users.

I like the look and the planned features you have - multi-descriptions is something I used to use heavily in WoW back in the day, and I never realized how much I missed that until you brought it up. Guild functionality made me squee.

But, I have some concerns.
Merisioux has been the main addon for everyone to use since it came out (Like a year or more ago?), it's something we on Argent recommend everyone to go and get - the arrivial of another and especially if it's not compatible with Merisioux in the crucial areas is going to confuse everyone. I'm especially thinking of new players as well.
In WoW you had a billion (well, I knew of four, but it's been 3 years) RP addons and it was a right mess, often ending with you having two or more addons installed to make sure you didn't miss a flag or a description.
I don't know how well the compability is now (I'll put both on and see if the world explodes) but I'd urge you to at least make sure they are as compatible as humanly possible.

Now, my favorite parts of Merisioux as it is right now, is the extended flagging functionality - You have flags for your IC/OOC status as well as your preferences, which has been a great help at least from what I can tell - it reduces drama lead on by different playstyles. Out of all of them, at least in my guild the Peaceful/Conflict flag and the maturity flag have been very popular.
But also the Meta section, to give people a heads up about something you feel as a player they need to know. I use it to state what system I use for fights for example, so people don't get surprised if they end up in a fight with my character.

I get that the additional flags potentially confuse and clutter, but I think one thing to remember is that they were heavily desired by the community when seebs was writing the addon and we're all used to it now. The functionality of them is truly great, and I wouldn't go without them if I had the choice. If anything, make it optional for people to show the additional flags and the meta section, but please don't take it away from us.

Hey there,

Compat-wise, Tome and Meri feature full compatibility wherever possible. Tome can read Meri, Meri can read Tome. Running Tome and Meri at the same time is possible, but be aware that Meri has no priority for which data it shows. If it's receiving two sets of data from one user (IE: you running both addons), we don't know how it will display that info, as there are going to be conflicting fields.

Tome always prioritises Tome data, providing that Tome data exists, and people running both Tome and Meri also will only see your Tome data.

The extended flagging functionality is something we're not likely to add to Tome in any way. As it stands right now, the flags for Tome (IC/OOC, Experience Flag, Tutor) all translate into the appropriate Meri flag, so a user with Meri will still get some of the flags.

We intentionally left out the more descriptive flags and the meta field simply because of personal preference. Both me and Zhevron come from a WoW-RP background, where these features weren't around in the addons we used. At a pinch, we feel people can just write "(( Mature Roleplayer ))" in their descriptions and people will understand it just as well.

Unfortunately, adding the optional flag system is just another feature that, firstly, we don't really want to add unless the demand skyrockets, for reasons stated above, and secondly, wouldn't be on top of our list of priorities, as we have many core features of Tome still to finish.

I hope this addressed some of your questions, and thank you for your feedback.

I like the look and the planned features you have - multi-descriptions is something I used to use heavily in WoW back in the day, and I never realized how much I missed that until you brought it up. Guild functionality made me squee.

But, I have some concerns.
Merisioux has been the main addon for everyone to use since it came out (Like a year or more ago?), it's something we on Argent recommend everyone to go and get - the arrivial of another and especially if it's not compatible with Merisioux in the crucial areas is going to confuse everyone. I'm especially thinking of new players as well.
In WoW you had a billion (well, I knew of four, but it's been 3 years) RP addons and it was a right mess, often ending with you having two or more addons installed to make sure you didn't miss a flag or a description.
I don't know how well the compability is now (I'll put both on and see if the world explodes) but I'd urge you to at least make sure they are as compatible as humanly possible.

Now, my favorite parts of Merisioux as it is right now, is the extended flagging functionality - You have flags for your IC/OOC status as well as your preferences, which has been a great help at least from what I can tell - it reduces drama lead on by different playstyles. Out of all of them, at least in my guild the Peaceful/Conflict flag and the maturity flag have been very popular.
But also the Meta section, to give people a heads up about something you feel as a player they need to know. I use it to state what system I use for fights for example, so people don't get surprised if they end up in a fight with my character.

I get that the additional flags potentially confuse and clutter, but I think one thing to remember is that they were heavily desired by the community when seebs was writing the addon and we're all used to it now. The functionality of them is truly great, and I wouldn't go without them if I had the choice. If anything, make it optional for people to show the additional flags and the meta section, but please don't take it away from us.

Yeah, no one likes the people that take their code with them when they leave. Personally, I've released under the GPLv3, so not really hiding anything either.

In order to make LibMerisioux more universal, I think your normal flagging system should be moved into Merisioux itself and be made transparent in the library. That would allow for people to implement their own flagging systems quite easily. Tome was made with simplicity and accessibility in mind when it came to its flags. I really only have a flag that states their roleplaying experience. This is the way most addons in WoW did it and I honestly prefer it that way myself.

And I've thought about using the storage API myself for character data. Question is...how limited is it? I assume that one day, some inexperienced developer is going to have an awesome idea to store a lot of data in server storage and not compress it. That could cause some serious issues for addons like Tome and Merisioux if we only use the storage API.

I'll consider at least bringing in LibMerisioux for the compatibility provided the resource usage isn't too high. I've noticed that it brings in another 4 dependency libraries. I assume you're in control of all of them?

And as a side note, I decided to rely on LibUnitChange as well. I figured it's okay as long as Trion keeps it updated. Well, that and the fact it wouldn't take long to reimplement it inside the addon should they fail to do so.

EDIT: I'm not sure you want to implement everything that I'm being asked to implement in LibMerisioux, but if you want to have a look at current feature requests for Tome, you can always check the Github repo issue tracker: https://github.com/zhevron/Tome/issues

I've really got a long way to go before I'm even remotely done with an official release.

I'd be interested in hearing more about the flag thing -- I might be able to accommodate stuff. And I've had requests for things like age, height, and weight.

As to the library: LibMerisioux exists specifically with intent that no one has to re-implement the functionality. I could in theory disappear and stop maintaining it, but I have released it under terms such that anyone can always go ahead and take it over. I am not in the "you can't have my toys I'm quitting" camp.

So, yes, it's intentionally separate. I'm almost certainly going to add UI to Merisioux for anything that LibMerisioux does, just for maintenance, but the goal is that if other people want to exchange data, they can use the library and then we all (in theory) get guaranteed compatibility.

So lemme know if there are fields you'd like LibMerisioux to have added, and I'll see if I can get those in. It's a good time for updates, because the old library (0.15 Merisioux and earlier) won't survive the 2.4-2.5 API updates, so I can sort of push new versions.

The biggest change which might matter to you is that current LibMerisioux is now using the storage API by preference, because that can reduce bandwidth usage. There's another more subtle change, though. Right now, LibMerisioux is doing its own compression/decompression of serialized objects... But it is now also accepting uncompressed strings in some cases. The intent is that once everyone is on at least this version, I will stop doing the compression-decompression in LibMerisioux, and instead take advantage of LibRarian doing that automatically.

Feel free to drop by #riftuidev anytime, I'm usually around.

And I totally get where you are coming on with the concern about third-party libraries. I think the only one I've been relying on is LibUnitChange, and Zorba has updated that.

In all honesty, I felt that it wasn't all that safe to rely on third-party libraries these days in Rift as most developers here are long gone and I fear quite a few libraries and addons are going to die as soon as the new event system is enforced. Tome was made with the mentality that it would not have to rely on third-party libraries if possible. There's really nothing more to it. Hopefully it all makes sense to you. I made the addon with the new event system in mind and relying on third-party updated could be the death of it.

EDIT: It's also worth mentioning that I did not go with a flag system the way LibMerisioux implements it. I keep a single flag for Tome which I convert to a set of static flags for Merisioux when it responds to a query. I guess you could say that LibMerisioux wasn't flexible enough to be used the way I needed it to for my addon.

Should you be interesting in converting LibMerisioux to a more universal format and running that as a separate project, I'd be happy to both use and contribute to it.

Just curious... Looking at the code, I notice that you have re-implemented LibMerisioux. I am wondering why; in particular, I'd been assuming anyone else doing similar addons would use the library so that it would be easy to keep things synchronized if, say, I updated the library to use new communications methods. Which I did...

The intent had been to completely discontinue the old rar_query/rar_datum messages when the old event API goes away, since in principle every version of LibMerisioux which supports the new event API also supports the newer messages.